From the bestselling author of Black Run comes Antonio Manzini’s mesmerizing second mystery novel featuring detective Rocco Schiavone.
Six months after being exiled from his beloved Rome, Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone has settled into a routine in the cold, quiet, chronically backward alpine town of Aosta: an espresso at home, breakfast in the piazza, and a morning joint in his office.
A little self-medication helps Rocco deal with the morons that almost exclusively comprise the local force. Especially on a day like today. It’s his girlfriend’s birthday (if you could call her that; in his mind, Rocco’s only faithful to his late wife), he has no gift—and he’s about to stumble upon a corpse.
It begins when a maid reports a burglary in Aosta. But there’s no sign of forced entry, and after Rocco picks the lock, he notices something off about the carefully ransacked rooms. That’s when he finds the body: a woman, the maid’s employer, left hanging after a grisly suicide. Or is it? Rocco’s intuition tells him the scene has been staged. In other words, it’s murder—a pain in the ass of the highest order.
In this stylish international mystery, Antonio Manzini further establishes Rocco Schiavone as one of the most acerbic, complicated, and entertaining antiheroes crime fiction has seen in years.
Industry Reviews
Once I started reading, I couldn t stop. More than once I thought I d spotted the killer, but I was always wrong. --Venerd? di Repubblica" Manzini delivers a wonderful mix of in-depth characterization with an ever-deepening plot. Best of all, perhaps, are his descriptions (his evocation of the sounds an espresso machine makes is just one example) and his characters wide-ranging comments on Italian life and politics. --Booklist" Argumentative, bad-tempered, liable to work around official procedure in order to attain his objectives, Schiavone has a puzzle to unravel and a number of his own personal mysteries to reveal to us. --Espresso" Entertaining...Readers will look forward to seeing more of this fascinating and complex character. --Publishers Weekly" [Schiavone] brings the case to a solution out of Agatha Christie as satisfying as it is unexpected here Schiavone continues to make a memorable companion in crime. --Kirkus" "Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. More than once I thought I'd spotted the killer, but I was always wrong."--Venerdi di Repubblica "Argumentative, bad-tempered, liable to work around official procedure in order to attain his objectives, Schiavone has a puzzle to unravel and a number of his own personal mysteries to reveal to us."--Espresso "Manzini delivers a wonderful mix of in-depth characterization with an ever-deepening plot. Best of all, perhaps, are his descriptions (his evocation of the sounds an espresso machine makes is just one example) and his characters' wide-ranging comments on Italian life and politics."--Booklist "[Schiavone] brings the case to a solution out of Agatha Christie as satisfying as it is unexpected here...Schiavone continues to make a memorable companion in crime."--Kirkus "Entertaining...Readers will look forward to seeing more of this fascinating and complex character."--Publishers Weekly
